


Belated

by thewhitestag



Category: Batman (Comics), DCU - Comicverse, Red Robin (Comics), Teen Titans (Comics)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-08-26
Updated: 2012-08-26
Packaged: 2017-11-12 23:50:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,556
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/497051
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thewhitestag/pseuds/thewhitestag
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Can you still call it impulsive when they’ve been holding it in for years?</p>
            </blockquote>





	Belated

**Author's Note:**

  * For [SweetFanfics](https://archiveofourown.org/users/SweetFanfics/gifts).



Blinking red, yellow, red, yellow. He can sense the lights even with his eyes closed, drawing him out of sleep and into the sluggish place where dreams keep clinging. The give of the mattress beneath him is familiar in a way that is almost unsettling. He reaches to his left to brace his hand against the wall but his hand cuts through empty air.

_What?_

Eyes fly open. Whole body jolts up like a spring-loaded trap, covers falling to his waist.

_Ah. That’s right._

It’s dark, but he still recognizes it instantly. His old room, back at the manor. He blinks the fuzziness out of his eyes and waits for his pulse to come down.

Even with his new place at Crime Alley, he sometimes returns to the nest like this. It keeps Alfred and Bruce from worrying too much, which in turn keeps them from interfering unnecessarily in his work. He misses them, too, of course. Misses the manor and the cave and the old grandfather clock by the library and the sound of wind passing through the oaks. It’s achingly familiar, and at the same time strange. After being alone for so long, he’s forgotten what it’s like to wake up and feel that he is home.

Before he lets himself settle, he remembers the blinking lights and grabs his communicator off the night table. A knock interrupts him as he toggles to the security alerts.

“Master Timothy?” Alfred’s voice calls out through the door.

“I’m awake,” he answers gruffly, throat still muddled with sleep.

“Very good. Then you’ll have surely noticed the manor alarms,” the butler says. There’s a strange twinkle to his words, though subdued, like he’s holding back laughter. “It seems that they have been triggered by your visitor.”

Tim rubs his eyes and runs Alfred’s words over in his head. Yes, he’s sure he’s awake, but he still feels confused.

“Visitor? Alfred, what’s going on?”

The door eases open and a head peeks inside. Despite the butler’s usual unyielding expression, Tim knows him well enough to read his mirth. “It appears, sir, that a young man from Kansas is here to see you. And he brought pie.”

 

 

\-----

 

 

He should be excited. Or annoyed. Probably both. But right now, he’s not sure what it is that he actually feels. He throws on a pair of track shorts and an old gray PE shirt from Brentwood, and leaps down the carpeted staircase to where Conner is waiting, coming to a stop in front of the heavy swinging panel of the kitchen door.

Tim has always liked the kitchen. It’s his favorite room in the manor—as upscale as the rest of the place, perhaps, but without the same cold distance. Caramel-colored walls and buttery light. Gaudy souvenir magnets and little reminder notes covering the fridge. It feels real; livable. And now Conner is inside. And Conner can surely hear him standing, hesitating in the hallway, but Tim feels like he’s being herded onto center stage without ever having looked at the script.

It’s not as though he’s unused to seeing his best friend; Tim’s been back with the Titans for months. But he’s always wrapped himself up in work, padding the space between himself and the others. Now Conner’s closed that distance, putting him in a situation where he can’t hide behind mission files and protocols—but that’s what the guy has always done, hasn’t he? Intellectually, historically, biographically, this is true. But when Tim searches his mind for how that friendship used to work, the images and feelings are like the hazy memories of a dream.

He can’t even figure out the right way to say hello.

With a quick prayer for luck, he hopes that he can improvise. He pushes open the swinging door, finding his friend sitting at the center island, attending to a cup of coffee. And his anxieties about making the right greeting instantly melt into blank confusion.

“You’re wearing a party hat,” Tim says flatly.

“I am!”

Tim has no response to that, other than to stare.

Conner pulls the hat off his head sheepishly. “Anyway, happy birthday!”

Tim opens his mouth. Then closes it. Rests a hand on the back of a chair, gingerly. “Conner. What month is it right now?”

Conner scrunches up his face. “September. Are we playing a game?”

“No, more like an exam,” Tim answers. “Any head injuries recently? Come into contact with strange glowing rocks, which may or may not have been kryptonite? Feel free to think about your response.”

“No and no. Well, there were these weird glow-in-the-dark lollipops I saw at a rave in Metropolis, but I’m pretty sure they were just rock candy with special coloring. And maybe drugs. Probably drugs. I can get you some the next time I’m up there.”

“I think I’ll pass on glowing drug-candy,” Tim confirms, then glances at the box on the counter. “On the other hand, that pie smells amazing.”

“Strawberry rhubarb,” Conner proclaims proudly. “Ma sleeps early so I couldn’t ask her to bake a cake, and we made a ton of these this week so I thought it’d be alright if I took one, and anyway pie is better.”

Tim hums in agreement, pulling out a barstool to sit with him. “Pie is better.”

He wants badly to laugh. Feels it’s the reaction he ought to have, the way Conner’s babbling on like this. And he manages to keep a cool amusement on the surface, but inside the pit of his stomach, he’s all jitters. He feels like an impostor of himself, trying to maintain a fake friendship with a best friend who’s even worse at acting.

Conner goes on jabbering.

“Right? I tried bringing it to your other place but you weren’t there, so I had to do the super-hearing thing, and then when I finally got here the butler dude was all li—”

“Conner?”

The sound of his name shocks the larger teen to a cold stop. And then his face shifts, melts a little. Brow lowers, eyes brim with apology as they stare down into his cup.

“Tim. I know you’re birthday’s in July,” Conner blurts. And like a steam engine rolling to a halt, he lets out a long hissing sigh. His whole body seems to slump and he curls his fingers tighter around his mug, cradling it into the palms of his enormous hands.

There had been plenty of times in the past when their friendship was strained, when it had been stretched to its limits as they tested one another, challenged one another, did all their best to make one another angry. But even then, they rarely had trouble speaking freely. But now, when they have nothing fight about, when they have every reason to cling to one another, they’re both paralyzed.

Tim swallows, though his throat is painfully tight.

“So then, what’s all this about?”

Conner’s eyes raise for a flashing moment before dropping again. “Your birthday. I missed it.”

Tim furrows his brows, resting his elbows on the countertop and leaning forward. “Conner you were there; we had a party. The one at the Tower? I seem to recall you blowing out my candles for me.”

Still staring down into his coffee, Conner smiles at the memory. It’s brief, barely longer than a twitch before disappearing, returning to something more somber. “I meant the year before that.”

Tim tries to respond. Mouth makes all kinds of shapes, but all he can manages is a quiet, “Huh.”

The jitters in his stomach resolve and condense, taking a more familiar shape. It always has to come back to this. Back to the year and a half of madness, the year and a half of confusion and anger, and finally a most painful illumination. Grief had made his heart so humiliatingly apparent.

Tim drops his arms off the counter. Rests his hands on his thighs, squeezing them tight and only letting go just before he leaves finger-shaped bruises. “But…why now?”

Conner shifts his gaze, but only from his cup to the countertop. His pinky taps on the granite as he picks his words. “I was cleaning my room this afternoon—see, Ma’s always getting on my case about that—” He purses his lips shortly, cutting himself off before he can shoot into another nervous tangent. “I was going through my closet and I found all this stuff. Stuff from before I…from before. I couldn’t stop looking at everything, spent hours just remembering junk, y’know? And then,” he says, reaching into his pocket, “I found this.”

He sets down a tiny wadded up package in front of himself and nudges it over to Tim. It’s just a little bit smaller than his fist. The brightly striped wrapping paper is rumpled from being inside Conner’s pocket, and judging by the amount of tape and ribbon, the initial job probably hadn’t been too crisp either. And written in black marker, with a familiar messy scrawl, Tim sees his own name. Tim rests two fingers against the long-belated present, like he’s trying to take it’s pulse, but it’s his own heartbeat he’s trying to keep in control.

“It’s about two years too late, but…” Conner fidgets in his chair. “You gonna open it?”

Tim nods, clearing his throat, but his voice still comes out strained. “Yeah, yeah…I just. Gimme a second. To admire your gift-wrapping skills.”

“Smart-ass,” Conner replies, but he sounds just as overwrought.

Tim turns it over in his hands, trying to find the best place to start peeling back the tape. It’s very light. Despite the mass of knotted ribbon, it doesn’t take too long before he’s got it open and has its contents slipping into his palm.

An old turtle shell, bleached on the belly side, dyed blue on the other.

Conner tries for a smile. “I found the shell in the creek, y’know the one just south of the farm—um. Anyway, I was just gonna paint it at first, but then Ma said I should try using dye. And uh, I thought it turned out pretty cool.”

Tim doesn’t speak. Still trying to find a way to respond that won’t make him fall apart.

Meanwhile Conner’s expression begins to falter in the silence. “Um, you get it, right? ‘Cause you know how we used to play Mario Kart all the time?”

Commanding his lungs to breathe, Tim lets out a jittery chuckle. “No, I—I remember. God, we’d waste _hours_ on that.” He runs a thumb over the roughness of the carapace as the memory floods him, hands remembering the motions. Untangling all the console wires, getting everything plugged in correctly. Knuckles growing stiff from holding the controller for so long. Raiding Bart and Gar’s junk food stash and leaving only the licorice-flavored jelly beans. “And I’d always be in the lead, but then you’d manage to find one of those freaking blue shells and knock me to the bottom.”

“And you’d get so _mad_.” Conner laughs, and the sound of it is so loud and full that Tim finds himself smiling without meaning to.

“Only because of the way you gloated!”

Conner offers a toothy grin and Tim wants badly to return with a smile of his own. But he hesitates, bites his lip before it can properly form a sign of happiness, and then the moment dissipates like smoke. Conner’s eyes dim out with uncertainty, and they’re both sliding backwards into a place of sluggish aching.

“Thanks, Conner,” Tim says quietly. It’s a good gift. Thoughtful and funny, like a happy secret. And the craftwork itself is well-done. But he doesn’t know that he can accept it. He’s not the Tim that it had been meant for.

Running his nail down the shell’s geometric patterns, he wonders about the turtle that it once belonged to. This used to be a living creature’s body, he thinks. It’s home. But now, no matter how well Conner’s dressed it up, it’s just the empty leftovers of something that died years ago.

Tim sets down the shell, nestling it on top of the rumpled wrapping paper, and drops his hands to his lap. Squeezes a fist and holds it against his thigh. He’s trying to gather all his disappointment and bitterness and crush it into a tiny speck in the dark space between palm and fingers, but there’s too much. Is this really how it’s going to be? Flashing moments of closeness, bare echoes of how their friendship once was? Bright spots that flicker, grow stronger, and then finally sputter and die beneath self-conscious reflection?

Worse yet, Conner can see his frustration, and Tim is faltering for the right way to explain that he’s not angry at him, but Conner speaks first.

“I know it’s late,” he says quietly, “and I know you’re tired. But I…I just needed to see you.”

Oh.

Mind and heart are racing but mouth stays silent, because, well. What can you say to that. Tim’s just focusing on not choking on his own saliva. Conner doesn’t look much more composed. But he’s moving. Eyes intent. He’s levitating, inexplicably drifting closer.

Suddenly the kitchen door swings open, catching both of them by surprise. Conner sways back, thumping into the seat of his chair as gravity reasserts its hold on him; Tim bites the inside of his lip. Dog nails clatter against marble and a disdainful tut comes from the doorway, possibly meant to be understood as a greeting.

“I was told that there was pie.”

Damian.

“Hi, Titus,” Tim sighs, as the dog pushes his head into his lap for obligatory scratching.

Conner scowls. “Isn’t it past your bedtime, kid?”

Like a tiny, angry bird, Damian’s chest starts to swell as he winds up for a tirade. “How dare you come into my house and speak like that—”

Tim intervenes before it comes to blows and flying food; he’d never hear the end of it from Alfred if they made a mess of his kitchen.

“Okay, okay. But you should be resting in bed, shouldn’t you?” Tim asks. He leans over to the left sleeve of Damian’s t-shirt. A large gauze bandage has been wrapped around his upper arm, a large slash of dark brown marking where the blood had soaked through and dried. And below, a number of smaller cuts and bruises criss-cross over older scars.

“Whoa,” Conner marvels. “Nasty.”

The ten-year-old jerks away, pulling his sleeve down cagily, though he seems strangely smug. “Hmph. It’s nothing; didn’t even hurt.”

Tim tries for a different tactic. “You should take your recovery more seriously. I’m sure Dick would want that.”

If anything that only makes matters worse. The boy puffs up even larger, face going red.

“Grayson! _Grayson_!” He shouts the name as if it were the most profane of insults. Tim winces in anticipation, but before the impending explosion, the boy suddenly deflates. “Grayson,” he begins coolly, before shaking his head and amending himself. “No— _Nightwing_. Whatever _Nightwing_ wants has nothing to do with _me_.”

Oh. Right.

Tim bites his lip. Feels something shifting inside of himself. “Yeah, he’s an asshole.”

Warily, Damian pulls out a barstool between Tim and Conner, and climbs up into its seat.

“It’s strawberry rhubarb,” Tim says, pulling the pie pan out of the box. “That’s okay, right?”

Conner gapes. “Tim, you can’t be serious.”

The despondent hell-spawn blinks at his knees. “That is uncharacteristically sensible of you, Drake.”

“You’re welcome. I think.”

“Fine,” Conner concedes. “Since you’re here then, you can sing with me.”

The kid’s sour mood begins to lift, as he eases back into his usual state of annoyed petulance. “Sing? What? What are you going on about, clone?”

Conner pulls out a single tiny birthday candle and a matchbook. “Sing happy birthday. For Tim!”

“Birthd—that doesn’t even make sense, why should—”

“Don’t you want pie?” Conner asks, sinking the candle into the center of the pastry and striking a match. “I won’t let you have any if you won’t sing.”

Damian snarls in defiance, lunging a hand into the pie pan, but his palm only smacks against the countertop, the pie having lurched out of its path. Conner smirks, a single showy fingertip in contact with the granite surface covering the kitchen island. Damian continues to swipe at the pie and the pan continues to swerve out of reach, the candle miraculously remaining lit. Titus rounds the island, barking jovially alongside his master’s cursing.

For the first time since coming downstairs, Tim feels at ease. Plucking up Conner’s empty mug, he stands.

“I’m going to make myself some tea,” he announces, though he’s not sure he’s heard.

Leaving the other two to their squabble, Tim makes his way to the hanging cabinets by the stove. Habit directs his hand and he pulls down a familiar olive-green tin of earl grey. It’s the kind that Alfred’s always favored. The butler has bought the exact same brand ever since Tim can recall, and likely had done so for years before Tim had arrived, before even Dick.

He runs his finger along the rounded lip of the base. Wonders if Alfred used to drink it even when Bruce’s parents were still alive. What it must have felt like to go to the grocery store in the weeks and months after they had been murdered and buy this same tea. And then again when Jason died, and again when they all thought Bruce had left them as well.

Each time Tim had faced tragedy, he’d made violent changes in his life, splitting his timeline into eras of gradual misery. He’d been so afraid of continuity, angry at how the world could show such indifference. How junk mail addressed to the dead would pile up on the side table by the door for months after the fact. But this tea, this habit, it’s not like that. It’s a choice. It’s trying for normal, trying for comfort, trying for _happy_ , even when the worst has come to pass.

Tim’s throat tightens. Vision blurs. _Great_. He’s managed to barely keep it together tonight and now he’s about to be undone by the label on a box of tea. He puts his hands on the edge of the counter, drawing in slow breaths; behind him, Conner and Damian are still bickering.

_“I just needed to see you.”_

The words echo in Tim’s head and he twitches his nose. Conner had been so close, Tim could smell the coffee on his breath.

The feeling inside his chest, there’s no mistaking it for anything other than hurting. But it’s an edifying kind of pain. Like a handyman checking a blinking bulb, his heart’s being gently twisted back and forth, to see if it still lights up the right way. And, yeah—it seems like it’s working just fine.

Across the kitchen, Conner is kneeling on the floor, struggling to get Titus to wear the party hat. Not that the dog is unwilling, or even cognizant of what is going on, but Damian’s got his foot planted against Conner’s neck as he fights to foist him off (“Release the hound, alien fiend!”). Conner laughs, mouth spread wide and head tilted back so Tim can see the backs of his teeth.

And it occurs to Tim that he wants to see the backs of his teeth more often. Wants to laugh with Conner, wants to fly with Conner, wants more memories. Wants surprise visits and Mario Kart and pie.

Suddenly Tim’s moving.

It’s like a dream where he’s watching himself from a distant place, somehow both recognizing his body and questioning who this person could be. He crosses the kitchen quickly and Titus backs away in surprise. Conner’s eyes go wide as he tries to stand, but Tim does the work for him, hefting him by the collar with both hands and lifting him to his feet.

It’s a bit awkward holding him like this because Conner is so much bigger. But a thrilling heat flows through Tim’s muscles with the realization that this is truly, finally happening, that nothing is going to stop him, not even himself. He licks his lower lip and takes in what might be his last breath before dying of embarrassment.

“Sometimes,” he urges, pulling Conner closer, “sometimes I need to see you, too.”

And thank goodness Conner’s TTK is quick on the uptake, dissipating itself just in time, because it’s so much nicer to kiss soft, yielding skin.

On the scale of romantic blunders, it’s not Tim’s most humiliating move. But as he readjusts, winding his arms around Conner’s neck, he is still quite aware of his own ridiculousness. Midway, he even starts laughing at his own melodramatics, but Conner just leans in, laying more kisses against the corners of his smile, against the tip of his scrunched-up nose. Cups the sides of Tim’s face and snickers along, with coffee-scented breath.

 

 

\-----

 

 

Still perched on his barstool, Damian lifts an elbow to the countertop and rests his chin on his hand. Titus whuffles curiously at the spectacle.

“Never mind about those fools,” Damian murmurs to the dane, who tilts his head at his master in blithe confusion.

Phenomenally unsurprised by the night’s turn of events, the boy rolls his eyes and extinguishes the lone birthday candle with a single, long-suffering sigh.


End file.
